Malcolm Turnbull trains his focus on his big broadband plans

Along with changes that mean upgraded copper can deliver faster speeds than just a few years ago, Malcolm Turnbull pledges minimum speeds of 25 Mbps with most people getting between 50 and 100 Mbps.
AFR

Malcolm Turnbull
is on the train – again. He laughs that even his wife Lucy thinks his passion for taking public transport is a little eccentric. But he doesn’t let regular old train travel stop him from being his own modern, mobile media centre. En route, he tweets, he takes photos, he checks emails, he makes and takes frequent calls. He and his media adviser constantly revise his schedule for later in the day. There are plans for a YouTube video, a blog, a press conference, a few interviews, an evening “pub crawl" in the electorate – by bus, naturally.

For Turnbull, this is actually relatively relaxed. He is clearly confident about his role in the Abbott campaign and his key role in a Coalition government as the Minister for Communications – mostly as the minister for his own version of the national broadband network. Despite the still-common fantasy among voters that Turnbull will somehow become leader, he knows that option is long past. He politely shrugs off fellow passengers who come up to tell him he should be prime minister.

“That’s very kind, thank you," he says. But that’s it. The prospect of a convincing Coalition win means Turnbull appreciates his influence in public life will be as a senior cabinet minister under
Tony Abbott
. So get on with it.

Hot seat

The train trip is to the electorate of Banks in Sydney’s south-west – a seat never before won by the Liberals. But this election it’s looking ever more likely that Liberal candidate, media executive
David Coleman
, will get a swing of more than the 1.5 per cent needed to defeat Labor’s long-serving
Daryl Melham
.

Turnbull is supposed to speak to a group of small business people but he has time to swing by the local shops beforehand.

More photos with bemused or beaming shop owners and customers, instantly tweeted. He proudly tells the local Greek baker and the local drycleaner and the local coffee shop owner he has 187,000 followers on Twitter. Maybe he will get a few more from Banks. The stroll is supposed to be through the most Labor-leaning part of the electorate. If so,
Kevin Rudd
may be in more difficulty than polls suggest. No one sounds anything other than enthused by the prospect of voting Labor out.

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The small business audience in the local club is even more pre-disposed. Turnbull, billed as “the star attraction", gives a few dozen people a short pep talk about the costly fiasco of Labor’s NBN and the benefits of a sensible alternative. The audience listens attentively but questions focus on the collapse of small-scale manufacturing in the area. Turnbull tries to sound sympathetic without conceding the frequent demands for greater protection from “unfair" imports. That’s supposed to be Tony Abbott’s problem – and Joe Hockey’s – to figure out once the campaign ends.

Engineering change

Turnbull will instead be pre-occupied with engineering an abrupt change in NBN Co’s business plan and direction to deliver on his promise of cheaper, faster broadband more quickly to more homes. That will inevitably include a major shake-up of the board of NBN Co as well as the management. Turnbull will be just as personally involved as the ex- communications minister
Stephen Conroy
in the workings of NBN Co – if presumably more rational about the outcomes.

But Turnbull has already brought his sceptical colleagues a long way down the fast broadband path. In the 2010 campaign, the Liberals looked wooden while Labor successfully sold the NBN as the fibre route to the future.

This time, the project’s well-known problems make it much easier for Turnbull to contrast promise with reality. He emphasises that despite all the money and talk, the premises connected to the fibre thus far are only 33,000, out of 200,000 homes passed – or 2 per cent of the total. Such delay is a political gift for the opposition.

But Turnbull now also has something of his own to sell – $29.5 billion worth of investment, mainly in fibre-to-the-node technology. Along with changes that mean upgraded copper can deliver faster speeds than thought possible just a few years ago, Turnbull pledges minimum speeds of 25 Mbps with most people getting between 50 and 100 Mbps.

This will be more than enough, he says, for the services most existing households want or need. Except for those getting fibre from the start in “greenfield" developments, houses and small businesses wanting higher speeds will end up paying a few thousand dollars for a fibre connection over the last few hundred metres. After all, the last bit is responsible for most of the cost, time and difficulty of the current rollout.

This more nuanced approach using a mix of technologies – including existing HFC cable designed for pay TV – is still going to take hard negotiating, especially with
Telstra
. Turnbull has had already had several informal chats with Telstra chair,
Catherine Livingstone
, CEO
David Thodey
and other senior executives.

But the construction contracts NBN Co has signed are strictly non-negotiable. Turnbull insists he has no desire to waste time and money trying to challenge existing contracts in court. He sounds confident he can quickly make the figures add up.

That test will come soon enough. For now, he is happy to keep tweeting from Turnbull Central.